Integrated Video Card and Gaming

K...I know that the integrated video cards drain power from the system RAM...about how much? And...If you just pumped your system full of RAM, would it almost negate the integrated card? Say I put in 2 gbs of RAM for a WoW system....would it just drain the RAM to run like a computer with a designated video card and around 1gb of ram?

Also the overall memory bandwidth is shared between your integrated card and the CPU.

Let's suppose you have DDR 400 RAM. It's theoretical bandwidth is 3.2 Gb/s. So the CPU and video "card" are sharing those 3.2 GB/s (thus reducing overall system performance)
Obviously when you have DDR2 RAM running in dual-channel mode, onboard video performance increases quite a bit, because there can be up to 12.8 GB/s (or even more) overall memory bandwidth.

Even if you load up your system with 4GB of RAM, the bandwidth will still be the same, so performance is not going to increase much.

So even a cheap, good video card is going to destroy any integrated graphics solution.

I didn't read everything above but to answer your question simply...adding ram helps everything but it won't increase your integrated video's properties. Just follow along with your upgrades. What is it with this 'WOW' stuff? I just don't get it...any game...any game...will benefit from component upgrades. Figure 2 gigs of ram...A dual core (at least) speedy CPU...add a decent GPU and watch your games come to life! It will make you want to get more...ram.....CPU speed (or cores)...faster card(s)...more power and it keeps on going. To 'Blind Dragon" I have right clicked on 'my computer' many times... but have never been enlightened as to how much ram is being used for graphics. Please explain further to one who doesn't know.

i found a p3 hp 98win computer and i have a p4 xp dim 2350 dell i been upgrading by parts i find, my question is can i take the intergrated vid card (nvida rive tnt2 64) and put it with my dell(intergrated too!) to get better preformance on games or anything?

Integrated video are not cards, they are integrated circuits on motherboards. If you change motherboards you change integrated video, understand? In your case M®Ð®£ÄM£®§, you would be much better off getting a PCI or AGP video card to replace the integrated video entirely

the question is can i put the Integrated vid card from the old pc i found into my dell pc that has integrated vid card too with no non-integrated vid card involved! and if so will it better my pc in anyway??
Thanx

the question is can i put the Integrated vid card from the old pc i found into my dell pc that has integrated vid card too with no non-integrated vid card involved! and if so will it better my pc in anyway??
Thanx

Click to expand...

Tmagic explained it to you clearly. An integrated video is not a card, but is part of the motherboard. If your old thing that you are talking about is a small card that fits in one of the motherboard slots then this is not integrated and yes you can use it in your dell board.